drugs

Jose Ramirez, 36, stands alongside the Trans-Manhattan Expressway in Washington Heights. Ramirez, a heroin addict, is among several thousand of New York’s homeless population that choose to live on the streets instead of entering the shelter system. Photo by Razi Syed.

Around 6 p.m. on a breezy overcast Saturday evening, Jose Ramirez was getting ready to pick up the day’s heroin after several hours of panhandling in Washington Heights.

“Sometimes it take five minutes, sometimes it takes 45 minutes,” Ramirez said, explaining how long it takes to get the $30 to $40 for each day’s supply of drugs and food. “Sometimes it takes two hours.”

Ramirez, 36, is one of the several thousand homeless New Yorkers who have ruled out spending nights in the city’s shelters, preferring instead to take their chances on the streets and subways. The unsheltered homeless struggle with substance abuse issues and mental health issues , said Isaac McGinn, spokesman for the Homeless Services department.

McGinn said these issues make street homeless a uniquely challenging group to get off the street.

Beginning in 2016, the government of Mayor Bill de Blasio started Home-Stat, a program intended to provide daily outreach to street homeless and develop individualized plans for their eventual movement to a shelter or housing, said McGinn.

“It can take anywhere from one dozen to more than two hundred contacts to bring street homeless New Yorkers indoors,” he said.

Around 690 New Yorkers were helped off the street from March to October 2016.

Under Home-Stat, McGinn said, the city doubled the number of city outreach workers from 191 to 387. The outreach workers partner with existing homeless shelters and identify individuals for placement into drug rehabs, mental health facilities or explore possible transitional housing opportunities. Any homeless who appear to be a threat to themselves or others would be hospitalized.

But accepting the outreach efforts is voluntary and the homeless can’t be forced to utilize services or stay in a shelter, McGuinn said. Despite the city’s efforts, some of the street homeless are reluctant to move into shelters, citing safety and sanitary conditions, among other issues the facilities sometimes have.

“People get into fights in the shelters,” Ramirez said, “You never know what can happen to you.”

Instead, Ramirez spends each night in a sleeping bag underneath trees and other foliage in a closed-off area beside the Trans-Manhattan Expressway.

According to the New York Department of Homeless Services, the city’s homeless population has continued to rise over the past decade. In January 2017, more than 62,000 people slept in homeless shelters – 24,000 more than the roughly 38,000 people who were housed in shelters at the end of 2010. The numbers of homeless are now at the highest levels since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

In addition to the sheltered population, around 2,800 people, like Ramirez, sleep on the street each night, McGinn said.

Ramirez, who was born in Puerto Rico and settled in the Bronx with his mother when he was 15, has been living on the streets for seven years. During that time, day-to-day life has been a battle for survival and a focused effort to find funds for the day’s heroin to keep withdrawal symptoms at bay.

“Every time I wake up, I’m just thinking about getting $20 to get straight,” said Ramirez, while walking along Highbridge Park in black sweatpants and a navy blue raincoat. “Without the heroin, when you be a junkie, you can’t move. You don’t want to talk to people, you don’t want to do nothing.”

Ramirez said he started selling drugs when he was 17. By 19, he was using regularly.

“I started smoking weed. I started hanging out. Start working, making a little bit of money, and I ended with the wrong people – started selling drugs,” he said. “I was selling cocaine, then I started sniffing it, hanging out. Then I started selling dope, bagging it up – I caught a habit. I couldn’t get straight. Then the dope I was getting was garbage. I couldn’t get high so I started shooting.”

As Ramirez spoke, he stopped often to recall details and at times, struggled to articulate a timeline of events.

According to Ramirez, his mother passed away in 2010. Unable to make the rent payments from the apartment and trying to sustain a heroin addiction, Ramirez reluctantly went out to Washington Heights and found himself a place among the winding expressways to set himself up.

He chose to stay in Washington Heights, rather than the Bronx, where he had been living with his mother for around 14 years.

“This is where I used to come to cop and where I had all my friends,” he said.

Ramirez recalled how he felt the first time he had to panhandle to support himself.

“There was my friend – I was sick so I didn’t have no money – but he only had $10 and he said, ‘Yo, I’m going to go get straight,’” Ramirez said.

“I’d be like, ‘Yo, can you help me out today?’” Ramirez remembered. His friend suggested he grab a sign and panhandle next to the traffic. Ramirez countered that he was “jones,” or in pain from drug withdrawal, and passersby wouldn’t give him money.

Eventually, Ramirez said he was in too much pain and did what he had to do. He grabbed a sign and planted himself along the entrance to the Trans-Manhattan Expressway, near 179th Street. After around 40 minutes, he had collected $20 and purchased two bags of heroin. Since that day in 2009, Ramirez said panhandling has been the primary way of supporting himself.

Homeless panhandlers in Washington Heights is a familiar sight to residents.

Willie Blain, 57, has lived on the Washington Heights streets since 1989. He panhandles there to buy drugs.

Willie Blain, 57, stands alongside the Trans-Manhattan Expressway near his encampment in Washington Heights. Blain is among several thousand of New York’s homeless population that choose to live on the streets instead of entering the shelter system. Photo by Razi Syed.

He spoke quickly and confidently, with a rapid-fire, staccato cadence, but occasionally mumbled and veered fluidly from topic to topic. Blain said he struggled with schizophrenia.

“I always had been in the streets – wintertime, I was in the streets; summertime, I was in the streets,” he said. “Always in Washington Heights – these are like my stomping grounds.”

Alongside the Trans-Manhattan Expressway, Blain has carved out a living place for himself with a black computer chair cardboard boxes and plywood arranged together in a small fenced off area. The road barrier provides a small area of shelter from the rain.

“The thing with other people is –- I know how to hustle so good that they act like they like me, but they don’t like me,” Blain said. “They hate me ‘cause they can’t do like I do. I make money, a lot more money than they do. I panhandle. I help people with their cars, if they have a flat tire. I can do just about anything.”

Blain said he avoids the other homeless in Washington Heights, preferring to spend his time alone.
“I have trouble with people because they like me, want to be like me, but can’t be like me,” he said.

The New York winter, brutal and resolutely unforgiving with nighttime temperatures routinely dropping below freezing, are the most difficult times for the street homeless. During the 2013-2014 winter, the latest year for which statistics are available, six homeless people died of cold-related weather.

Ramirez said he suspects the heroin he uses daily helps him and other street homeless cope with the frigid weather.

“Most of the homeless out here are heroin addicts,” Ramirez said. “People be like, ‘How you survive out here in the wintertime?’ “I’ll be thinking that the heroin keep me warm.“Like as soon as you do the dope, you don’t feel the cold.”

Life on the street is largely a solitary struggle.

“Most of the time I be by myself ‘cause I always ended up getting fucked over,” he said. “I got tired of looking out for people – ‘yo, I’m sick,’ or ‘yo, I need a dollar to get over here.’ Most of these people, they never look out for you,” Ramirez said. “The heroin addicts here aren’t like before – you could be sick and someone would come and get you straight. Now it’s rough.”

Irene Bonilla, a resident of The Sarah Powell Huntington House poses with her son CJ at the Women’s Prison Association event “Rebuilding Together” yesterday. Photo by Rebeca Corleto.

There are 46 people living at The Sarah Powell Huntington House, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, a residence for formerly incarcerated women and their children. Some are lifelong drug addicts, some were imprisoned for other crimes. Many have been separated from their children.

The House is owned by the Women’s Prison Association who opened its doors yesterday to over 100 volunteers for “Rebuilding Together” an event held to improve the facility. Volunteers spent the day repainting walls, windows, and staircases and doing repairs in the units.

Irene Bonilla resides in apartment 5D. She moved in after leaving prison and a period of homelessness.

“By 17 [years old] I was addicted to crack,” she said. “By 24 I had four children. Incarcerated in 1996, incarcerated in 2005. I’ve got 10 children including this one,” said Bonilla, gesturing to her young son.

Bonilla’s had a hard week, her sister died two days prior. Despite the grief, Bonilla insisted that she’s going to be okay. She’s worked hard to be sober for 24 months.

Diana McHugh, the director of communications of the WPA said she’s been with the group for over five years, and was one of the organizers of “Rebuilding Together.”

Prior to working for the WPA, McHugh taught a class for women at a correctional facility. In preparing for class one day, she opened the window blinds in the room to let some light in. Less than a minute later, a prison guard came in and shut the blinds, letting her know that it was forbidden to have them open.

“There’s no humanity in prison,” she said. “They’re being denied sunshine.”

That moment in the prison has stuck with McHugh for years and was part of the reason she sought out work at the WPA first as a volunteer and now a full-time employee. For her, Saturday was about letting the women know that they have people on their side. The WPA and all of the volunteers who came to paint the walls and staircases, make repairs and improvements, are there rooting for them.

“We provide a physical space. Someplace safer, more comfortable,” said McHugh. “The most inspiring part of today is to have so many volunteers share their time and let these women know that they matter.”

Statistics show that women in prison receive less visitors from family and friends than male prisoners. As much as 79% of incarcerated women were abused at some point in their lives. More than half of women in prison were the primary caretakers of their children prior to their jail sentences.

Bonilla was happy the volunteers are making her home more cheerful.

“When the walls are dull, it makes you feel depressed,” she said. “I go to my drug program, then come home here. Every day, same routine. The wall outside my apartment is green. That makes me really happy. Green is the color of money. Of life.”

Bonilla has been reunited with one of her 10 children, 6-year-old CJ. The WPA has helped her get her life back after prison. Bonilla compared her life in prison to her life now, grateful for what she has overcome.

“Not having to stand up and be counted,” said Bonilla.. “Not having to share a shower with five other women. Waiting for everything, in line to eat, waiting to go to the bathroom.”

The WPA helps women reunite with their children, find employment, and reestablish themselves after leaving the criminal justice system.

Tiffany Hallett manages the building. She has been at the residence for five years and helped oversee “Rebuilding Together.”

“People that are on the outside, that haven’t been in correctional facilities,think that these people are different. And they’re not. They’re no different,” said Hallett.” “It’s their choices that set them apart. And people may say, ‘Oh, why do they have to drugs because something happened?’ But they may not have had the same circumstances, or made the same choices.”

Bonilla recently received the good news that the New York City Housing Authority has approved her for permanent housing.

“No Regrets,” she said. “Twenty –eight years of crack and I’m proud of me now. I’m happy. Fridays are my best days. I go to parenting [program], come home, pick up CJ and got to my mom’s [house].”

PHILADELPHIA – Battling against neighborhood drug dealers and a rough economy, business owners in El Bloque de Oro are keeping a tight grip on their Latino traditions to sustain and revitalize their community with cultural programming.

In the Fairhill district of North Philadelphia, El Bloque de Oro is known as the Golden Block of Latino culture, art, music and food, but this commercial district does not appear as lustrous as it sounds. Taking many hits over the years, including a “badlands” reputation that was popularized by the novel Third and Indiana, community members struggle to maintain their beloved neighborhood.

“El Bloque de Oro is a community that is still embattered by very challenging economic pressures and that brings all of the ills of drug addiction and high levels of crime,” said Carmen Febo-San Miguel, executive director of Taller Puertorriqueno, an organization that promotes Latino art and cultural programs in the area.

Obtaining data from internal police memos, Philadelphia Weekly published a 2007 report listing the nearby intersection of Third Street and Indiana Avenue as number two for the top ten drug corners in Philadelphia.

Many business owners in the area do not agree with the dire portrayal of drugs in their community.

“There’s still some drug users in the surrounding neighborhood, but you don’t see them as rampant as they were in the 80’s,” said Christina Gonzalez, 39, President of Centro Musical.

The economic recession has also hit the community hard.

“We are going through a crisis right now, but little by little we are starting to come back” said Wilfredo Gonzalez, owner of Centro Musical.

Marta Diaz, 63, of Diaz Meat Market has worked hard to clean up this undeserved bad publicity by performing social work with local business owners to promote the area. Diaz has lived in her artfully decorated home above her husband’s meat market for 38 years and says she has seen the rise and fall of the area.

“Someone made up the term badlands to refer to our community because there was a lot of controversy and problems for a while,” Diaz said. “This was because of all the new people coming in and out who had no perception of how to take care of their neighborhood and the traditions that we keep in this community.”

The Hispanic Association of Contractors and Enterprises is working to revitalize the area with a vibrant, Latino-themed design. They predict that repairs of the signature golden sidewalks and street lamps designed as Caribbean palm trees will create a safer and more attractive commercial district. Business owners are positive about the changes and hope this will bring in tourism and boost up the rich cultures that enliven this commercial district.

According to Diaz, there is a unified sense of cultural pride and passion in the neighborhood, and business owners urge people to look deeper and see what truly lies at the heart of their community.

“We think that one day this will change and I feel satisfied with the people who have worked with the community for many years and seen it fall and rise.” Diaz said. “We aren’t giving up and we continue lifting ourselves up and keep working hard.”